How Do You Say ‘Breakout’?

The day Bob Berney got an early-morning phone call from his mother in Oklahoma City, he knew the movie his company--IFC Films--had released, “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” was something of a phenomenon.

Last Sunday, the Daily Oklahoman ran a story on the front of its entertainment section featuring “Tu Mama,” a sexually explicit, Spanish-language, Mexican teenage-coming-of-age-movie--not the typical kind of entertainment Oklahomans are accustomed to reading about in their paper. This kind of attention was even more surprising considering the film had not even been released yet in Oklahoma.

“IFC films don’t usually play Oklahoma City--ever,” said Berney, IFC’s senior vice president of marketing and distribution. He was referring to his distribution company’s penchant for picking non-mainstream fare.

But director Alfonso Cuaron’s “Tu Mama” seems to have broken through several obstacles--it has grossed more than $5 million domestically in a month’s limited release, making it one of the more successful foreign films in years. Berney is expecting “Tu Mama” to gross about $12 million in its theatrical run.

It’s one of two breakout foreign films in release in the U.S. “Monsoon Wedding,” Mira Nair’s funny and poignant portrait of contemporary family life in New Delhi, has grossed more than $6 million in two months and is expected to earn more than $10 million, making it the highest-grossing Indian film ever released in the U.S.

Both films go wider today with “Tu Mama” jumping from 194 screens to 240; it will likely expand to 300 screens a week later. (Berney hopes the film will open in Oklahoma City then, so his relatives can see it). USA’s “Monsoon Wedding” goes from 162 screens to 187 today.

Both films have benefited from specific marketing campaigns focusing on the art-house crowd, but also their respective ethnic communities.

These successes show how foreign-language films with universal themes can find an audience despite the challenges of today’s movie business, in which finding a screen for art-house fare--especially in another language--is increasingly difficult.

“In many cases, language is a major barrier,” said Gitesh Pandya, editor of boxofficeguru.com, a service that tracks box office grosses. He was also hired to help with “Monsoon Wedding’s” marketing strategy. “In many cases, mainstream moviegoers don’t want to deal with subtitles or dubbing. Distributors and exhibitors both want to minimize risk, and so they might be a little hesitant on booking those films.”

The success of both films is unusual in other ways. “Tu Mama” has pushed beyond its art-house audience despite the fact that it was released unrated because of its explicit nature. “It’s fairly unusual for a Spanish-language unrated film to do this kind of business,” Berney said.

Jack Foley, head of marketing and distribution for USA Films, which distributed “Monsoon Wedding,” noted that “Hindi-language films or Tibetan films just don’t have the same [appeal] as French, Spanish or Italian because they are not as common. It is a culture that I think is difficult for some in the West to get their hands around. [‘Monsoon Wedding’] overcame those issues.”

Neither film will come close to the blockbuster success of Sony Pictures Classics’ martial-arts romance “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a 2000 film that made more than $120 million in its domestic theatrical release alone. Miramax’s “Life Is Beautiful,” is ranked second in grosses for foreign-language films, pulling in $57 million domestically in 1998. The highest-grossing Mexican film was Miramax’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” in 1993 making more than $21 million in the U.S.

But what sets “Tu Mama” apart from those films is its sexual content. It is so explicit that rather than make cuts in the film or receive an NC-17 rating. Cuaron and IFC decided to go out with an unrated version of the film. It is much harder for an unrated film to get broad national exhibition, said Ray Price, head of marketing for Landmark Theatres, a major national art-house chain.

“Some circuits just won’t show unrated films,” Price said. “They are very conservative.”

In any case, “Tu Mama” has managed to tap into several audiences at once--the art-house/foreign film crowd, the Latino market and the mainstream mall crowd. Getting all of those audiences to view one film is challenging.

IFC and USA have done what is called a platform release, in which a film is rolled out slowly to test the waters. Through strong reviews and word-of-mouth, the movies have peaked the art-house crowd’s interest. In the case of “Tu Mama,” IFC marketed the film heavily on Spanish-language television, where they have tapped into Spanish-speaking older generations and bilingual younger audiences who are hearing about the film in both the Spanish- and English-language media. The company has spent about $3 million on marketing.

USA has also spent a couple of million marketing its film in the Indian and South Asian communities in large cities like L.A., Chicago and New York. Although its film has not crossed over into the mainstream, it is holding steady on the art-house circuit. Because English is an official language in India, most of the niche marketing was done in English in newspapers, radio and television shows with high South Asian demographics. Pandya, who was hired to formulate USA Films’ strategy with the South Asian community, said he targeted the younger, more Americanized South Asians through the underground club scene, hiring DJs to host dance parties with “Monsoon Wedding” as the theme.

It remains to be seen if the films will survive the blockbuster summer season. The competition for screens is already beginning, with movies like Universal’s “The Scorpion King” opening today on more than 3,000 screens and Sony’s “Spider-Man” opening in two weeks. Berney is hoping the movies will live on as counter programming for people who want to see something other than a big studio production.

“The big blockbusters will have an impact on everything,” Pandya added. “But with smaller ethnic films like these, there is a clear-cut audience that when the word-of-mouth reaches them, they have got their mind-set and they will go see that movie--the will make the time.”